This page contains the online worship offering of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow for Good Friday 2020
The worship for Good Friday can be found in several videos:
- A reading of the Passion Gospel by the Provost
- Good Friday meditations consisting of five reflections on the Kelvingrove Triptych
- An activity for members of the Young Church and their households
- The second podcast in the series entitled ‘Agony, Lamentation and Reunion’
Good Friday Meditations
It is our custom on Good Friday to reflect on the events of the first Good Friday by reading the Passion and by meditating on it. One of the ways we do this is to gather from 12 noon to 3 pm and hear sermons reflecting on the passion. We share silence and listen to music for meditation.
This year there are five meditations which are based on five scenes from Gwyneth Leech’s Kelvingrove Triptych which hangs in St Anne’s Chapel. Each meditation is accompanied by organ music from the cathedral organists Frikki Walker and Steven McIntyre.
The Passion
The first video is an audio only reading of the Passion Gospel by the Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth
The Meditations
About the Kelvingrove Triptych
Three panels, each seventeen feet high by seven feet wide, hanging on the north wall of St Anne’s Chapel in St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow
The triptych depicts the Easter Passion set in Kelvingrove Park. First, the eye encounters the figures at the bottom of each panel—actual portraits of regular park users on a late summer afternoon when the shadows are long: Sikh gentlemen, a group of Muslim women and children, cyclists, dog walkers and the ubiquitous nursery nannies and their charges. Certain figures will be familiar to members of Saint Mary’s congregation—Alastair Young, a past verger of the Cathedral, and Oran the golden retriever both appear in the centre panel. The artist’s daughter appears twice in the same painting—once as a small baby in red in a pushchair and then as a toddler walking beside the pushchair, recording the span of time taken in the completion of the canvases. As the eye travels upwards, the viewer discovers the Easter story. The left panel is Gethsemane. Reclining figures in the park on a sunny afternoon become, at the top, the disciples who cannot stay awake. In the upper left is the Arrest of Jesus, with Judas embracing Christ in the centre of a crowd of soldiers wielding spears and torches. The centre panel is dominated by the Deposition. The male disciples have all run away; the women are taking Jesus down from the cross to lay him in the tomb. On the right is the Noli Me Tangere. Mary Magdalene encounters the Risen Christ in the garden and does not recognise him. When at last she knows who he is, he says “do not touch me” (noli me tangere). He is real yet transfigured. The composition of the three religious scenes is inspired by Italian frescoes of the early Renaissance: Giotto’s Arrest of Jesus in the Arena Chapel in Padua, a Deposition in the Lower Church of St Francis in Assisi and Fra Angelico’s Noli Me Tangere in the Monastery of San Marco in Florence.
Download a PDF transcript of the meditations here:
20200410 Good Friday meditations transcript
Read about the artist at www.gwynethleech.com.
Young Church
The following video has been prepared for members of the Young Church by Rosemary Hannah & Sophie Agrell.
Podcast
In this second podcast in the series, art historian Dr Deborah Lewer examines ‘Pietà’ by Rogier van der Weyden. Video produced in partnership with the Iona Community. Music: ‘So much wrong’ translated and arranged by John L. Bell, Calum Woods (voice).
Podcast transcript:
Podcast script for Fri Sat (Lamentation)
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If you would like to make a financial contribution to enable this ministry, please see the stewardship page on this website. If you would like details of how to give by other methods, please contact the cathedral office to be put in touch with the Gift Aid Recorder, Alan McCulloch.
